Please pass on to your library departments (both
adult education and public library, etc.) my supplementary ideas
on the question recently raised in the Council of People’s
Commissars and let me know your conclusions (and those of the
respective departments).

The proper way to send in accounts, which is now
demand-ed by the Council of People’s Commissars, should
serve three aims:

I) authentic and complete information to the Soviet
government and all citizens about what is going on;

2) enlisting the public in library work;

3) encouraging competition among library workers.

To these ends lists and forms of accounting should be
immediately drawn up that will suit the purposes.

Account lists should, I think, be drawn up at the centre and
then reprinted in the gubernias and distributed among all
educational departments and all libraries, reading rooms,
clubs, etc.

These account lists should enumerate (printed, say, in
heavy type) the compulsory questions which library
man-agers, etc., must answer on pain of prosecution.
Apart from these compulsory questions there should be a
considerable number of non-compulsory questions
(in the sense that failure to answer does not necessarily carry
the threat of prosecution).

The compulsory questions should include the library’s (or
reading room’s, etc.) address, name and address of the
manager and his board members, quantity of books and newspapers,
working hours, etc. (the big libraries will have to give more
information).

The non-compulsory questions should include all
improve-ments being applied in Switzerland and America (and
elsewhere) so that we can reward (by giving bonuses in
the form of valuable books, collections, and so on) those who make
the most improvements and carry them out best of all.

For example: t) Can you supply precise information to prove
more books have been lent from your library? or 2) how
many people visit your reading room? or 3) book and newspaper
exchange with other libraries and reading rooms? or 4) compilation
of a central catalogue? or 5) work on Sundays? or 6) work in the
evenings? or 7) encourage. ment of new readers, women, children,
non-Russians, etc.? or 8) satisfaction of readers’
references? or 9) simple and practical means of storing books and
newspapers? Saving them? Mechanical means of obtaining the book
and returning it to its place? or 10) lending a book? or 11)
simplification of guarantees in lending a book? or 12) send-ing it
through the post?

And so on, ad infinitum ....

Bonuses are to be awarded for the best accounts and forthcoming
successes.

The Library Department of the People’s Commissariat of
Education must inform the Council of People’s
Commis-sars about the number of accounts received monthly
and the answers to which questions are given; and the totals.

Endnotes

[1]
On January 30, 1919, at a Meeting of the Council of
People’s, Commissars Lenin raised the question of the
library service. The decision compiled by Lenin and adopted by the
Council of People’s Commissars instructed the People’s
Commissariat of Education to publish and send to the Council of
People’s Commissars brief monthly reports on the progress
achieved in increasing the number of libraries and reading rooms
and the circulation of books.